论文笔记 | Creditor Control of Corporate Acquisitions

David A Becher, Thomas P Griffin, Greg Nini, Creditor Control of Corporate Acquisitions, The Review of Financial Studies, 2021;, hhab075, https://doi.org/10.1093/rfs/hhab075

本文主要研究了贷款协议中限制借款人并购决定的条款对企业并购的影响，以此探究该条款发挥正面作用（抑制过度投资，缓解代理问题）还是负面作用（限制了NPV 为正的投资）。

为了避免潜在的内生问题，本文引入了违反贷款协议的限制条款后重新设定更严格的条款的样本作为处理组，与未违反贷款协议的限制条款作为对照组，进行检验。

检验发现，在违反财务契约后，债权人利用他们的讨价还价能力收紧这些限制，限制收购活动，特别是预计会获得负的公告回报的交易。违反财务契约后宣布收购的公司平均获得了1.8%的股票收益，并且没有追求风险较低的交易。

整体结论是债权人利用合同权利和重新谈判过程来限制由管理代理问题驱动的破坏价值的收购活动。

We use firms that are not in violation of a financial covenant as a comparison group to estimate the counterfactual outcome for violators。 但违反财务契约可能是公司自身绩效或特质引起的。
本文解决：
First, we visually explore the timing of the effect of a financial covenant violation. 时间效应上的变化

Second, we estimate standard acquisition regressions to account for observable differences between violators and nonviolators. 添加控制变量
Third, we follow Roberts and Sufi (2009) and Nini, Smith, and Sufi (2012) and implement a quasi-regression discontinuity design (quasi-RDD) to confront identification concerns related to the nonrandom assignment of violations

Acquisition behavior

Acquirer announcement returns

Deal characteristics

Acquirer balance sheet changes

Acquisitions and loan contract renegotiation